NHS Islington (www.islington.nhs.uk) was chosen as the winner of the healthcare award because the site which was built in house by NHS Islington demonstrates a real strength in delivering vital health information to help patients make an informed choice about health services. This was achieved through integrating with NHS Choices and providing additional interactive features which help engage the audience. The new site has seen an increase of 38% in the amount of site visitors and the services pages are now the most visited pages.

A search facility that is fully integrated with NHS Choices is available on every page allows visitors to find services such as GPs, dentists and pharmacies based on name, location or postcode. Search results are highlighted if they are within the borough and link through to further information. The information is pulled automatically from the NHS Choices website through a web service which removes the need for any resource required to provide this valuable information to visitors. The site also contains further local information such as a GP service comparison tool which allows visitors to easily compare GP services and ratings.

The website also has an interactive tool on every service page, allowing visitors to rate the service they received, this feedback is then displayed in real time on graphs next to each service. The homepage also has a poll that gets updated regularly to reflect local health issues. Both the service ratings and the poll have received an impressive number of submissions providing extremely useful performance information to the trust and visitors who want to make an informed choice.

Steven Howard, Web Services Developer for NHS Islington was responsible for building most of the site. He commented “I am delighted that the NHS Islington site has won this award. The priorities for the new website were to improve usability and accessibility whilst delivering more detailed information on the services available and their performance ratings. This we have achieved thanks to the features of Sitekit CMS, which has enabled us to integrate existing databases and web services into our site and create additional features like rating a service. These features have helped to better inform patients in Islington and this award is an appreciation of this aim”.

About Sitekit Solutions Ltd
Sitekit specialise in web content management and embrace the latest web technologies to ensure that customers benefit from developments in functionality, performance and security.

Sitekit CMS is pioneering in its field by ensuring websites are easy to rollout and always running on a system which is compliant with the highest web standards. Owners and site users benefit from a high quality web presence that is easy to build and maintain.

For more information on Sitekit CMS please contact 0845 299 0900 or read more on our website, www.sitekit.net.